The present invention relates to a semiconductor substrate, a method of determining the position of a connection element, and a method of connecting a connection element with a semiconductor substrate.
Semiconductor chips include contact pads on one or more of their surfaces. Integrated circuit manufacturing techniques incorporate a plurality of identical chips on a large semiconductor wafer. These chips are tested at the wafer or individual chip level to determine which ones may be utilized in subsequent manufacturing steps.
The equipment for performing these tests includes a connection element, and a probe tip, for making contact with the contact pads on the individual semiconductor chips. Because of the small size of the chips, the number of contact pads on an individual chip, and the small size of the contact pads, it is necessary to precisely align the probe tips with the contact pads on the chip. For this purpose it will be necessary to move a probe tip to a desired position where it is intended to make contact with a contact pad on the chip, to determine the position of the probe tip and to correct the position of the probe tip when it turns out that the actual position does not correspond with the desired position.